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Chapter 2: Background l. Significant Entities and Individuals Jeffrey Epstein was born in 1953 and, prior to his arrest, worked at various jobs in the financial industry and ultimately developed considerable wealth. On July 2, 2019, a federal grand jury of the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York returned an indictment that charged Epstein with engaging in sex trafficking and a sex trafficking conspiracy, in violation of 18 U.S.C. 88 371, 1591(a), (b)(2), and 2. These charges were based on allegations that between 2002 and 2005, Epstein paid girls as young as 14 years old hundreds of dollars in cash each for engaging in sex acts with him at his Florida and New York residences. The indictment further alleged that Epstein also paid each of these minor victims hundreds of dollars in cash to recruit other girls to engage in sex acts with Epstein. On July 6, 2019, Epstein was arrested at Teterboro Airport in New Jersey upon his return to the United States from France and was transported to the Federal Bureau of Prisons’ (BOP) Metropolitan Correctional Center, located at 150 Park Row in New York, New York (MCC New York). Following a detention hearing on July 15, 2019, the court ordered that Epstein be detained pending trial based on the court's finding that he was a danger to the community and a flight risk. MCC New York is a federal administrative detention facility operated by the BOP that primarily provides pretrial detention services for the U.S. District Courts for the Southern and Eastern Districts of New York. The BOP temporarily closed MCC New York in October 2021 due to substandard conditions that are unrelated to this investigation. When it was operational, MCC New York housed approximately 750 inmates at any given time. Prior to its closure, the majority of MCC New York’s inmate residents were individuals with pending criminal charges (as opposed to individuals who had been convicted of offenses and were serving a sentence of imprisonment), but whom the court had determined under applicable law should remain in custody pending trial either because they represent a danger to the community, a substantial flight risk, or both. MCC New York has several different housing units. Epstein was initially assigned to MCC New York’s general inmate population, but on July 7, 2019, he was moved to the Special Housing Unit (SHU) pending reclassification due to the significant increase in media coverage and awareness of his notoriety among the other inmates. The SHU is a housing unit within MCC New York where inmates are securely separated from the general inmate population and kept locked in their cells for approximately 23 hours per day, to ensure their own safety as well as the safety of staff and other inmates. Correctional Officer (CO) Tova Noel and Material Handler Michael Thomas began working together in MCC New York SHU at 12 a.m. on August 10, 2019.4 During their shift, they each created and submitted falsified official BOP forms documenting inmate counts (often referred to as “count slips”), and Noel completed and signed more than 75 separate entries on an official BOP form documenting 30-minute rounds (often * Noel worked her regular shift in the SHU from 4 p.m. to 12 a.m. on August 9, 2019, followed by an overtime shift in the SHU from 12 a.m. to 8 a.m. on August 10, 2019. Thomas did not work his regular shift as a Material Handler ina different location of MCC New York and instead worked an overtime shift in the SHU from 12 a.m. to 8 a.m. on August 10, 2019 DOJ-OGR- 00023372